Computational Simulations of Metal Additive Manufacturing Processes: An Introductory Review

Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes of metals allow creating three-dimensional parts through the progressive addition of thin layers of material. These processes fall into two major categories, called Powder Bed Fusion and Directed Energy Deposition. Physical understanding of the AM processes can provide a holistic view of the sensitivity to process parameters. Computational modeling of these processes can not only provide an important view of the physical phenomena that lead to the final properties of the material and quality of the product, but also the means to explore the design space, in order to create functional products. This introductory review focuses on the AM of metallic materials, particularly on issues of physical and numerical modeling. Considerations are presented about the various physical phenomena at work, most used computational methods, techniques to perform the modeling and their respective validations, demonstrating the current challenges and limitations, as well as the future perspectives for computer simulations applied to AM processes.